{"id":8266,"date":"2026-08-29T16:24:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T20:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/?page_id=8266"},"modified":"2026-10-01T07:40:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T11:40:53","slug":"labor-and-capital","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/course-syllabus\/labor-and-capital\/","title":{"rendered":"Labor and Capital"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&#8220;The deskilling of workers by rapid mechanization and growth of the factory system, as well as the commercialization of agriculture, which impoverished farmers, put most Americans under the control of capital: railroads, banks, and large corporations.\u00a0 The small producer &#8211;the backbone of a free labor economy and the antislavery Republican Party&#8211; became increasingly obsolete in the new economic order of industrial capitalism.\u00a0 Before the Civil War, both the slave and free states were predominantly agrarian.\u00a0 After it, heavy industry started dominating the national political economy even though agriculture also contributed to the nation&#8217;s rapid economic ascent.&#8221; &#8211;Sinha,\u00a0<em>RISE AND FALL,\u00a0<\/em>p. 348<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Image Gateway<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu\/john-gast-american-progress-1872\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-3943\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/files\/2019\/02\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-09-at-3.04.24-PM-1024x630.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 940px) 100vw, 940px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/files\/2019\/02\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-09-at-3.04.24-PM-1024x630.png 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/files\/2019\/02\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-09-at-3.04.24-PM-300x185.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/files\/2019\/02\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-09-at-3.04.24-PM-768x472.png 768w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/files\/2019\/02\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-09-at-3.04.24-PM-488x300.png 488w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/files\/2019\/02\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-09-at-3.04.24-PM.png 1424w\" alt=\"Gast painting\" width=\"940\" height=\"578\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AHemd90ZdsU?si=XeJ4ScnzeGTBTC0Z\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-origwidth=\"560\" data-origheight=\"315\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Overview\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><em><strong>\u201cThis association of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times,\u201d\u00a0 \u2013Henry George,\u00a0Progress and Poverty\u00a0(1879)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4832\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\">\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Timeline<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>1873\u00a0 \u00a0 Panic begins with downturn lasting for several years<\/li>\n<li>1877\u00a0 \u00a0 Farmers\u2019 Alliances begin to organize in Texas<\/li>\n<li>1877\u00a0 \u00a0 Great Railroad Strike creates widespread unrest<\/li>\n<li>1886\u00a0 \u00a0Protests and violence at Haymarket Square in Chicago<\/li>\n<li>1892\u00a0 \u00a0Peoples\u2019 Party organizes for presidential campaign<\/li>\n<li>1893\u00a0 \u00a0Panic begins with an even deeper downturn than 1873<\/li>\n<li>1894\u00a0 \u00a0Federal government intervenes in railroad strike<\/li>\n<li>1896\u00a0 \u00a0McKinley defeats Bryan in heated presidential contest<\/li>\n<li>1900\u00a0 \u00a0US leads world in manufacturing output<\/li>\n<li>1901\u00a0 J.P. Morgan organizes US Steel, the first billion dollar company<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Some Key Statistics\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Nearly 100 people died during Great Railroad Strike of 1877 with an estimated $40 million in property damage.<\/li>\n<li>1850 = 9,000 miles of RR tracks across US \/\/ By 1900 = 190,000 miles of RR tracks across US<\/li>\n<li>By the late 1880s, the Knights of Labor had over 700,000 members and the Farmers\u2019 Alliances had over 1.5 million members.<\/li>\n<li>Between 1895 and 1904, nearly 4,000 companies (representing about 1\/5 of the national economy) merged with rivals, creating conglomerates such as DuPont, General Electric, and US Steel.<\/li>\n<li>By 1900, the richest 10 percent of Americans owned an estimated 90 percent of the nation\u2019s wealth.<\/li>\n<li>Republicans won 12 out of 16 presidential elections between Civil War and Great Depression.<\/li>\n<li>Nearly 80 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the 1896 presidential election.<\/li>\n<li>In total, during the period around the turn of the 20th century, more than 1,000 socialists won political office in the US.\u00a0 Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs received 6 percent of the popular vote in 1912.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Featured Videos<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Historian H.W. Brands offers an overview of the Gilded Age\u00a0through profiles of three capitalists: \u00a0John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan, in this hour-long videotaped lecture. \u00a0Social studies teacher Tim Betts provides a somewhat shorter and snappier summary of the same information in a music video parody called \u201cRobber Barons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/K7d766W6GTE\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-origwidth=\"560\" data-origheight=\"315\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kc-zU9WHVO0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-origwidth=\"560\" data-origheight=\"315\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The deskilling of workers by rapid mechanization and growth of the factory system, as well as the commercialization of agriculture, which impoverished farmers, put most Americans under the control of capital: railroads, banks, and large corporations.\u00a0 The small producer &#8211;the backbone of a free labor economy and the antislavery Republican Party&#8211; became increasingly obsolete in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":373,"featured_media":0,"parent":13,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-8266","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8266"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8339,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8266\/revisions\/8339"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}